for other concepts of a similar name see at polarization
A plane wave with more than one component, i.e. being a section of a trivial vector bundle, is characterized not just by its wave vector , but also by that component vector . Broadly speaking this is the polarization of the wave.
Specifically a plane wave with coefficients in the cotangent bundle of a Minkowski spacetime , such as an electromagnetic field history “vector potential” is given by
In the case of free electromagnetic waves the wave vector is light-like, , and in Gaussian-averaged Lorenz gauge the polarization vector has to satisfy and polarization vectors proportional to the wave vector are gauge equivalent to zero. Therefore in this case the space of physically distinguishable polarizations for given wave vector is the quotient space
This is also called the space of transversal polarizations.
If one chooses coordinates such that then this may be identified with the space of vectors of the form .
Wikipedia, Polarization (waves)
Radovan Dermisek, Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) (pdf, pdf)
Last revised on December 18, 2017 at 14:12:31. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.